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I’m delighted to announce that my book is out. It’s available in the usual places: Amazon; barnes and noble; seminary co-op; and your local book store. A Kindle version will be available in April. Published by Harvard University Press, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion consists of twelve chapters as well as an introduction and conclusion. It also has a dozen maps (one of my pet-peeves–history books that don’t show where the events take place). I’ve included selection of images of Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas, including his image on Peruvian currency (see below), posters, museum pieces, and a letter he wrote in jail with his own blood.

The following excerpt comes from the introduction. I point out how my book builds on and distinguishes itself from previous studies, in English and Spanish. I wanted to write a book that provided a complete view of the mass rebellion and its impact while raising new points. As the title suggests, I try to bring the reader into the battles themselves, the long, bloody conflict that led to 100,000 dead and still echoes in Peru and far beyond today.

“I wanted him to have the name of revolutionary, indigenous people in the world. I wanted him to know he was part of a world culture and not just from a neighborhood…”— Afeni Shakur

Tupac Shakur and Tupac Amaru

At virtually any presentation, I get the following question: was Tupac Shakur named after Tupac Amaru? I get it even after I’ve talked about it in lecture. Students remain incredulous. While more frequent in the United States than in Peru, I’ve also fielded questions about the two Tupacs in Lima and Cusco. I’m writing more about this (and also have some in the book) but here are the basics.

In 1972, Afeni Shakur (formerly Alice Faye Williams), a member of the Black Panther Party in the United States, was acquitted on conspiracy charges in New York, part of a group known as the Panther 21. Once freed, she changed her infant son’s name from Lesane Parish Crooks to Tupac Amaru Shakur. He was less than a year old, born in East Harlem on June 16, 1971, while his mother was out on parole. The last name honored her husband and Tupac’s stepfather, Mutulu Shakur, himself a prominent black nationalist. “Tupac Amaru” referred to the Peruvian revolutionary.

Tupac Shakur wore the name proudly, emblazing it as 2-Pac on his chest, in one of his many tattoos. Handsome, gifted, and shot down in his prime, Tupac Shakur became an international symbol of resistance. Both Tupacs, José Gabriel and Shakur, died martyrs, with their popularity or fan-base growing post-mortem. After her son’s death, Afeni Shakur founded the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation, which includes a very active Foundation for the Arts.

The History of the Andean Region, a summer course offered through UC Davis Study Abroad, is hosting an information session on Thursday. From 12pm – 1pm in the Study Abroad office, come learn what you need to do to spend your summer climing Machu Picchu and learning to speak either Quechua or Spanish. Click here for a Facebook invite.

The name might ring a bell. If you follow Latin American politics, you will have heard of the Tupamaros in Uruguay and the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru in Peru. They were named after him. If you know your history of the Conquest, you’ll recall Tupac Amaru I, who resisted the Spanish from Vilcabamba and was executed in Cusco in 1572. They were related. If you have been alive in the last twenty-five years, you have heard of Tupac (Amaru) Shakur. Yes, the rapper was named after Tupac Amaru.

The execution of Tupac Amaru I in 1572. Guaman Poma in Danish National Library

Tupac Amaru led the largest uprising in colonial Spanish American history, from its beginnings near the Inca capital of Cusco in November 1780 until his execution on May 18, 1781. In fact, the rebellion continued into early 1783, well after his death and that of his influential wife, Micaela Bastidas. It stretched through the core Andean area of today’s Peru and Bolivia, from Cusco to Potosí, petrifying authorities and the Spanish throughout the continent and in Madrid. José Gabriel Condorcanqui was an indigenous authority, a kuraka, a title that the Spanish conquerors retooled from the Inca Empire. Condorcanqui added the name Tupac Amaru to highlight his bloodlines and ties to the Inca nobility. Condorcanqui made his living as merchant or muleteer, work that took him throughout colonial Peru, where he heard stories, saw injustices, and made friends and potential allies. He spoke Quechua (the language of the Incas, today the mostly widely spoken indigenous language in the Americas) and Spanish, and was comfortable in the home of Cusco’s upper classes as well as the huts of the region’s masses, the indigenous peasantry. He had mules, much land, and many debts; he was neither poor nor rich.

Modern depiction of Tupac Amaru II

Tupac Amaru and his wife Micaela had spoken out about injustices against indigenous people, rising taxes, and controls placed on the Church. In the 1770s, he had petitioned in the courts of Lima to defend himself and his people. Frustrated by their repeated failures, in November 1780, he and Micaela abducted an important regional authority, Antonio Arriaga, and, after assembling thousands of Indians, mestizos, creoles, and Spaniards, hanged him. The rebels spread to the south, ransacking textile mills and haciendas and declaring an end to Spanish oppression. They also stressed a return to the Incas. The rebels nearly took the city of Cusco in the first days of 1781. In the end, the rebellion encompassed an area larger than that of the American Revolution. Up to 100,000 died in the brutal fighting and its reverberations shaped Peru for decades if not centuries.

My new book features Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas, untangling many mysteries about them and their uprising. Key questions include the role of the Catholic Church, the lure of the Incan past, and the continuation of the uprising after the leaders’ execution. This story and these mysteries help explain the enduring fascination with Tupac Amaru since his death over 230 years ago.

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion‘s first review is out. Kirkus Reviews notes that, while most studies of the Tupac Amaru rebellion are either in Spanish or outdated, Walker’s

straightforward account looks beyond the death of the rebel leader, on May 18, 1781, barely seven months after the start of the uprising, to the subsequent and bloodier foment led by his cousin Diego Cristobal and others during the next year. Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui Noguera (1738–1781) descended from the royal line near Cuzco; his forebear and namesake, Tupac Amaru, was executed by the conquering Spanish in 1572. His royal ancestry proved a galvanizing force to his leadership among the Quechua people, who believed that another Incan chief was destined to reappear.